Neue Ostpolitik is usually associated with Willy Brandt and the FederalRepublic's opening toward Central and Eastern Europe. Less well known isOstpolitik's profound impact on nations outside Europe. India, China, thetwo Koreas, South Africa, and Israel were affected to varying degrees bythe consequences of Brandt's Ostpolitik. Simultaneously, Ostpolitikstrongly influenced the Western Allies' politics toward and withinEurope, the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE),China's position vis-à-vis the West and the Soviet Union, and the policyof non-proliferation associated with détente. The complex interactionbetween West German Ostpolitik and international politics from the late1960s through the mid-1970s was the topic of an international conferencethat took into consideration recently released archival documentsshedding new light on many aspects of the Cold War, détente, and theinner dynamics of international history.[1]

The East European Response

The conference's first panel dealt with "The East European Response" toOstpolitik. Wanda Jarzabek described Poland's anxiety about the newpolicy, an anxiety that stemmed from Polish fear of a German-Sovietagreement – a second Rapallo – and a revision of the Oder-Neisse line.Simultaneously, Poland tried to encourage closer cooperation within theEastern bloc in order to formulate a cohesive response to Brandt'sOstpolitik as a means to keep Germany divided and limit its strength.However, neither the Warsaw Pact members nor the Soviet Union showedparticular interest in Poland's proposals. The distrust toward Germanydissipated when generational change set in after 1970, making way formore constructive negotiations with the FRG and, ultimately, thenormalization of Polish-West German relations. Improving Czechoslovakrelations with the FRG took much longer, as Oldrich Tuma showed in hispresentation. This delay was due to the emotionally burdened legacy ofthe 1938 Munich Agreement as well as to the nationalist stance adoptedby the Czech government-in-exile. Negotiations between the CSSR and theFRG therefore proceeded very slowly, even though Moscow lent assistanceto both sides. In the meantime, Tito's Yugoslavia, as one of the leadingpowers within the nonaligned movement, unsuccessfully tried to convinceWest Germany to construct a common development policy in the ThirdWorld, Milan Kosanovic reported. Despite its international standing,Yugoslavia, the first country to which the Hallstein Doctrine wasapplied after it had recognized the GDR in 1957, remained economicallydependent on the FRG even after relations were restored in 1968.Economic interests and fears of German imperial tendencies heavilyinfluenced all Eastern and Southern Central European reactions toOstpolitik. Rapprochement was facilitated by socialist governments'hopes that a West German Social Democratic administration would betterunderstand their situation. Apart from such common features, nationaldifferences within the bloc remained visible throughout. Whereas Germanresponsibility for war crimes complicated rapprochement efforts withPoland, the CSSR was never offered such political symbolism by WestGermany.

Overarching the bloc, the Soviet Union was particularly eager to furtherdétente and rapprochement, as Andrey Edemskiy showed on the basis ofarchival material, some well known and some newly available. After theSoviet sphere of influence had been internationally recognized in theaftermath of the 1968 Prague intervention, the Politburo consideredestablishing a socialist countries' confederation in order to unify theEastern bloc. Brandt's Ostpolitik fell on fruitful soil in the SovietUnion, for Gromyko was pleading to accept the realities and Andropov andBrezhnev were working towards normalizing relations with the FRG and theestablishment of a European peace conference. Brezhnev developed a closeworking relationship with Brandt, which was nurtured by the back channelbetween Bonn and Moscow as well as by Soviet propaganda aimed at calmingthe Soviet population's fear of a German attack after the signing of theMoscow Treaty. While they succeeded in improving relations with the FRGon the basis of cultural exchange, Brezhnev and the Politburoincreasingly lost faith in the East German government, Edemskiy argued.Brandt's resignation proved a major set-back for Soviet-West Germanrapprochement. In addition, although the USSR admitted its weakness byaccepting the need for détente, it never considered relinguishing itshegemonic control over the socialist countries and proved decisive inmaking rapprochement happen.

Altering the Divide in Europe

The second panel dealt with cultural and economic relations as well asthe impact of the CSCE in "Altering the Divide in Europe." Uta Balbier'spaper on German Olympic politics under the waning influence of theHallstein Doctrine gave an impression not only of the scope of theGerman-German competition but also of how sports, as soft power, couldhelp to shape national politics and identity. When the GDR's flag wasflown for the first time in 1969, this marked the beginning of a newphase of West German policy toward the GDR and thus a new phase ofOstpolitik. David Stone, in his paper on Comecon's InternationalInvestment Bank (IIB), showed that not everything that happened duringthe late 1960s and 1970s was a direct result of Ostpolitik. The IIB,which distributed Western loans to the socialist countries, was not theconsequence of increasing Western investments but rather grew out of theneed for economic reform within the Eastern bloc. Behind that need stoodEastern Europe's fear of Germany and the resulting attempt to preventGerman unification by tying in the GDR and integrating the bloc. Whilefears of German aggression may appear preposterous from today's vantagepoint, efforts to prevent the implementation of West German revisionismwere not entirely unreasonable, as Gottfried Niedhart made clear in hispresentation on the CSCE. According to Niedhart, Brandt's Ostpolitikaimed at securing for the FRG the right to peacefully revise itsborders, whereas the foremost goal of the socialist countries, includingthe Soviet Union, was to settle their borders once and for all. Thislatter point was echoed by Alexei Filitov, who, though unable to attendin person, argued in a paper on the Moscow Treaty that the signing ofthe 1970 treaty, despite critical differences between West German andSoviet objectives, had been made possible by Egon Bahr's negotiatingskills, the lack of efficiency in Soviet decision-making, and the FRG'sacceptance of the Brezhnev Doctrine. The discussion centered on theproblem of balancing stabilization with subversion as practiced by theSPD vis-à-vis the Eastern bloc. This question arose several times overthe course of the conference, as did the question of continuity betweenWeimar and Brandt's Ostpolitik, both of which were characterized bypeaceful revisionism.

The World Responds

The following panel turned the participants' attention towards globalresponses to Ostpolitik. Tilman Dedering showed how South Africaactively tried to make use of Ostpolitik's underlying concept of Wandeldurch Annäherung. Portraying apartheid as a multicultural conflict amongdifferent nationalities, the South African government tried to improveits international reputation by pretending to aim at a pragmaticarrangement with the "black nation" as well as with other Africannations – an effort really meant to entrench apartheid. However,international skepticism increased in the early 1970s, and theartificial division between economic and political cooperation with theapartheid state was called into question. In addition, when Ostpolitikbegan to reduce tensions between the FRG and the GDR, development aid toAfrica lost its former instrumental use. Sara Lorenzini, who could notattend the conference but provided a paper, addressed the impact of thispolicy change on Africa: beginning in the mid-1960s, competition betweenEast and West in the field of development aid was to be replaced bycooperation in order to help the Third World and to overcome theEast-West divide. Despite such early efforts toward détente, Cold Warthinking remained prominent, and the Western countries' reluctance tocommit themselves to giving a greater share of their GNP to the ThirdWorld prevented success. In the meantime, South Africa becameincreasingly isolated, denouncing détente as a communist plot. In thisregard Ostpolitik helped to strengthen Western Europe's integrity. TheEuropean community was positively affected by France's efforts towarddétente since the mid-1960s, as Marie-Pierre Rey, whose paper was readin her absence, described in her account of France's simultaneoussupport for the USSR and Brandt's Ostpolitik. Pompidou had startedcooperation with Moscow early on and therefore welcomed West Germanefforts at rapprochement with the East, hoping that this might bolsterFrance's attempts to end the Cold War and extend the Western systemeastwards. On the other hand, he feared that the FRG might challengeFrance's lead in détente politics, become too self-confident, if notnationalist, and tend toward Finlandization. In order not to appear tobe copying Brandt's Ostpolitik, France refrained from signing a treatywith the USSR and supported the FRG in the CSCE talks, therebystrengthening the European agenda. European interests also figuredprominently in Britain's perspective on West German Ostpolitik, whichthe British Foreign Office regarded as heavily burdened by the memory ofthe 1938 Munich Agreement, the "betrayal" of the CSSR. Great Britaintherefore supported Brandt's Ostpolitik, which set aside the legacy ofMunich and Potsdam by acknowledging the Eastern borders, although it didnot declare the 1938 agreement null and void, as demanded by theCzechoslovak side. Unlike the Foreign Office, the British public focusedless on the past and more on Great Britain's entrance into the EuropeanCommunity, which seemed to hold the possibility for the UK to become aleader in Europe and a bridge to the United States, especially withinthe CSCE process. Similar to the French and British position, the UnitedStates' uneasiness about Ostpolitik, which Irwin Wall in his papercharacterized as "overdetermined," was due to fears that the FRG mightbecome too strong or slide into the Eastern bloc by attempting to reachunification. The US administration therefore tried to give the WestGermans the impression that the German question was progressing whilesimultaneously working to secure the status quo. As the panel'sdiscussion made very clear, the Nixon administration was quite skepticalof Brandt's activities and would not have regretted his defeat in the1972 election. At the same time, the extensive use of Kissinger as aback channel and the resulting disadvantage to the Department of Statevis-à-vis the National Security Council complicated the formulation of acoherent US position on Germany. Kissinger tried to control détentethrough the negotiations over the Berlin Agreement, yet he had toacknowledge that American influence on European détente was limited. Inthis regard, the controversial Nixon Doctrine was related onlyindirectly to détente, being much more the result of Vietnam and theThird World. Here it once again became clear that Ostpolitik was not theonly factor influencing international politics in the late 1960s andearly 1970s, but rather part of a larger shift in priorities andinterests that changed relations among the different blocs and alliancesas part of global détente and domestic developments.

The same phenomenon could also be observed in Asia: The South Koreangovernment regarded West German Ostpolitik as a role model forovercoming partition, and the FRG monitored the Korean case closely.However, strong intra-Korean mistrust combined with ideologicaldivergence to make rapprochement difficult, eventually resulting in thereinforcement of Korea's division, Meung-Hoan Noh stated. Indiawitnessed grave crises, too, but managed to overcome them moreconstructively, Amit Das Gupta argued in his paper on South Asia. Heshowed that, along with good personal relations between Indira Gandhiand Willy Brandt and the latter's good standing with the Indian public,the discarding of the Hallstein Doctrine provided the basis for improvedrelations. India was willing to defer recognition of the GDR until theFRG had settled its issues with East Berlin. Likewise, when thePakistan-Bangladesh crisis of 1971/72 presented India with a majorchallenge, improved relations with West Germany proved much more usefulto India than the GDR's support – a visible sign of the fact that, dueto Ostpolitik and détente, international competition for India's favorhad lost much of its former intensity. China, according to BerndSchaefer, perceived Brandt's Ostpolitik in a much different way.Opposing Ostpolitik and favoring German unification was part of China'soverall strategy to undermine the Soviet Union's hegemony. This strategyincluded portraying the GDR temporarily as the USSR's victim – a movethe GDR, in need of Moscow's support, did not dare to make. Brandt, inthe meantime, never considered a playing the China card in negotiationswith the Soviet Union, making rapprochement with the USSR his foremostpriority. In Mao's China, this resulted in fears of the Soviet Unionstarting a war in the Far East now that it was freed from the Europeanburden.

The panel's discussion centered on two questions: The Western Europeanperception of the risk of Soviet expansion, which some thoughtdiminished in the early 1970s, and the Federal Republic's view of otherdivided countries and its corresponding self-image. Did the FRG notacknowledge the contradiction between recognizing North Korea,Bangladesh, and the People's Republic of China while demanding thatother countries not recognize the GDR? This question, posed by JacquesHymans, led to a discussion about the concept of self-determination –another element that seemed to provide a link from Brandt's Ostpolitikto Weimar.

In the last paper on global responses to Ostpolitik, Carole Finkreviewed Israel's relations with the FRG under the Brandt government.She contrasted West Germany's view of Israel as a "special" case until1969 with the social-liberal coalition's efforts to achieve "normal"relations with Israel. This was based on the FRG's growingself-confidence as a European and international player, the SPD'sopposition to Israeli settlement politics in Gaza, and West Germany'sawareness of its economic dependence on Arab oil. Contrary to theFederal Republic, whose self-image had undergone important changes sincethe 1960s, Israel remained heavily influenced by its founding generationand, under Golda Meir's government, became increasingly isolated afterthe Six-Day War and more and more dependent on the United States. Itbecame clear in the discussion, Israel, as a by-product of the Cold War,suffered from West German attempts to end the Cold War. In addition,West German-Israeli relations were burdened by the FRG's opposition tothe use of force in order to reach national unification and by Israel'sdemands for reparations and restitution. Ostpolitik played its part inestranging both countries and temporarily ending their formerly"special" relationship.

The Nuclear Question

The conference's last panel focused on "The Nuclear Question" and theproblem of non-proliferation within the context of Ostpolitik. WilliamGray gave an account of West Germany's attempts to take the lead amongthe non-nuclear powers, which was furthered by Brandt's successful useof his moral credentials. Below that highly symbolic level, the FRG didnot hesitate to engage in nuclear trade with other countries, therebynot living up to its own high moral standards. Jacques Hymans, on thebasis of Social Identity Theory, argued differently: In his paper on theidentity politics of non-nuclear-weapons states (NNWS), he tried to showthat West Germany took the lead in supporting the Non-ProliferationTreaty (NPT) because of its feeling of international responsibility.However, the FRG's support of Argentina's demands for nuclear technologyand Argentina's failure to join the NPT showed not only the risks ofsuch empathy but of détente, too. Despite their differentinterpretations, both papers spoke of the Brandt government'saspirations to earn the Federal Republic an international standing as a"normal," yet leading European state.

The final discussion attested to the range of problems the conferencehad addressed: The relevance of individual actors and of differentgenerations; the importance of economic interests; in the case of theFRG, problems of morality, guilt, and the wish for normalcy; continuitybetween Weimar and Ostpolitik revisionism and the latter's inherenttension between subversion and stability; and the overall connectionbetween Ostpolitik, détente, and the end of the Cold War. From aneconomic point of view, Magnettheorie, with its emphasis on the FRG'sattractive power as a wealthy capitalist state, seemed to have beenrealized. However, economic success alone was not enough to resolve theenmity between East and West. Sine qua non was the consolidation of theWest German democracy and its abandonment of revanchism – a task theBrandt government embraced with great determination, even though itthereby ran the risk of "betraying" the Eastern European dissidents'efforts to undermine Soviet hegemony. In general, Ostpolitik's limitscould not be ignored, and Ostpolitik as a whole might have to contentitself with existence as a subcategory of global détente. This leads toa new perspective: With Ostpolitik obviously having global consquences,it seems worthwhile to take a closer look at transnational phenomenatranscending national borders and political blocs. The range of newinsights on Ostpolitik and its global impact offered at this conferencehave laid the foundation for deeper investigations into many fascinatingmethodological and conceptual issues of diplomatic, international, andtransnational history.

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Experts & Staff

Christian F. Ostermann // Director, History and Public Policy Program; Global Europe; Cold War International History Project; North Korea Documentation Project; Nuclear Proliferation International History Project